Artist in Residence

Sep 8 – Oct 10, 2008

Western Front Media Arts and Western Front Exhibitions are pleased to announce Vancouver-based artist Allyson Clay as Artist-in-Residence for New Strategies in Feminist Video. Working in collaboration with poets Lisa Robertson and Nathalie Stephens, Allyson Clay will produce elements of a performative video work exploring the phenomenon of “interior speech,” the silent conversation that one has with oneself as if speaking to another person. The project explores silence as loudness and critiques the univocality of the speaking subject, blurring simplistic binaries around gender and sexuality. In exploring the notion of doubling, reflection, and mirroring of the self, the artists will make an experimental space in which they engage with “feminism” in terms of refusal, expression and potential. Works in progress will be featured in The F-word, a group exhibition of feminist media co-curated by Alissa Firth-Eagland and Candice Hopkins.

Allyson Clay is a Vancouver-based artist. She has exhibited widely in Canada and internationally over the past 20 years.

Lisa Robertson and Nathalie Stephens are poets currently based in Oakland and Chicago respectively. Lisa Robertson was a member of the Kootenay School of Writing from 1990 to 2000, and works as freelance writer, editor and teacher. Nathalie Stephens is a bilingual writer of many publications, including her forthcoming book Carnet de desaccords.